5 Annoying Parenting Habits

5 Things That Make Me Feel Like I've Hit a Brick Wall

1. A Fixation on Height

Bragging about the height of our children seems to be the latest wave in competitive parenting. Since a child’s potential height is basically predetermined in the womb, this makes as much sense as bragging about a child’s natural hair colour. I don’t really care if a child is going to grow up to be 5’6” or 6’5”. It doesn’t matter and it has nothing to do with parenting, providing the child is getting adequate nutrition.

2. Using a Cutesy-Wutesy Voice

Can we not use our adult voices to speak to children? I’m fine with exagerating gestures, enunciating clearly, and even raising our voices half an octave. But do we need to change the letter L to letter W, and say, “What a wittle cutie, you are?!” And do the ends of our sentences always need to go up in pitch, almost like the questions of this paragraph do?

3. A Life-Is-Beautiful-All-the-Time Outlook

Perhaps I’m jaded, but I like to hear the horror stories, the tales of children biting their mothers, flushing train engines down the toilet, and bazooka barfing at the book store. And I like to hear the tales of parents who manage to walk upright in spite of this. I do not need to know that children make your life even more perfect all of the time. Because Jaded Me doesn’t believe it.

4. Writing from the Perspective of Kids

I talked extensively about this in my Christmas letter rant, but some things need to be reiterated: if your child is not old enough to actually speak, tell me about her in third person not first person.

5. Being Critical of Other Parents

Okay, bring in the Irony Marching Band, because – you guessed it – I just spent 300 words being critical of other parents. Yup, therein lies the convoluted nature of my brain, my argument, and even my parenting.

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Comments

#1 cracks me the heck up. I know a lot of people who are all, “My kid is a giant! Have you seen how big my kid is? Wow! My kid sure is big!” I have to wonder if going on and on about the size of your kid is the new way of compensating for a small penis, but even women do it. Who knows what they are trying to accomplish.

Ahmen on the voices. I get clearly (even exaggeration when) enunciating, but not mispronunciation. Don’t they need to hear how the word is actually pronounced in order to learn to say it? But it does seem to be a strange motherly impulse, as even as I dislike it, I have a weird name for her sleeping bag (“Sleeepy blankie”). Even as I say it I give my head shake…but I just can’t stop. What is up with that?

I think words invented by kids can become part of a family’s vernacular. When my twins first started speaking, Vivian called William (My-yum) and he even called himself that. We all still sometimes call him My-yum. So, I agree: sleepy blankie is in a different category than “poopsy woopsy, widdle cuddlewumpkins”.

I always find it weird when parents speak for their children when their children are totally of capable for answering for themselves. On the flip side I think it is totally weird and annoying when people ask a baby what his or her name is instead of talking to the parents. They can’t answer. Don’t they know that? As a result it forces parent to answer for their children perpetuating my first point of annoyance.

Okay – I’m totally with you on the cutesy-wootsy & life-is-perfect stuff. Every time I meet a mom like that I can’t help but wonder if there’s a seething Norman Bates lurking under the surface. My snarky pet peeve is people who don’t think before they speak. Not the ‘wow, did you gain weight’ bunch (cause I did gain a little thankyouverymuch), but the parenting advisers who don’t think through their assumptions.

Gender assumptions also annoy me massively. You could almost say they make me “hysterical.” With boy-girl twins, I get a lot of them. “Bitchy moms” comment mad me laugh. We couldn’t possibly be anyone’s pet peeves…

I have a hard time with those moms that feel the need of letting you know their kids did everything earlier than mine: Exp: , my baby has her first teeth at 7 months, abnoxius mamma: really? My baby did it a 5 months, yours is a little bit behind! Ça m’enerve!! That’s not only stupid but mean! Don’t they understand that every baby goes at his own rythim? They are not in competition, as a lot of moms seems to be! Because of that I just don’t say ANYTHING of my baby to them!

Argh. I hate anything that has to do with comparing children! Height… now come on now! That is just soooo silly. Gah. All that stuff – hate it, no thank you. Also hate the ‘everything is wonderuful la-di-da’ sort of (fake) outlook on life. Who are these people???

I seldom say anything about my children’s height — I just leave it to other people. Because they are tall, there is simply no two ways about it. Oh well, so am I.

As to the high pitched voice, studies have actually shown that talking in the manner actually helps babies learn. they pay more attention to the higher tone. You don’t have to spew nonsense, of course, but the higher tone catches babies’ (infants’) attention.

Everything else, I’m with you. I look over the majority of blogs by moms that I read, and they aren’t talking about how rosey everything is. Parenting is full of anxiety and fear and tough times. As well as joy and love and so on. But I feel better knowing I’m not alone in the trenches.

I think that being critical of other parenting styles is almost unavoidable. We all feel so strongly about it, how could we not have strong opinions? I think keeping the ole mouth shut is the important thing. I work hard to keep my opinions to myself, and I really appreciate it when other parents do, too.

Great list! Another irritating thing about mothers is the tendency the over-praise their cutesy-wutesy. For example, “have you seen how clever she is? She can work the remote control.” My silent response? “Get a life dimwit, that cutesy-wutesy spends 6 hrs per day behind the TV set.”